I'm getting a peculiar error when launching Marathon 2. It says "There is not enough memory to open Marathon 2 (zero K needed 38043K available)

This is the config:
OS9.0.4
Sheepshaver RAM setting 64M
Marathon 2 memory settings suggested 4495K, Minimum 6000K, Preferred 6000K
VM is not turned on in the memory, and the option is not even visible
Disk Cache default (2048K), RAM Disk off.

Has anyone seen that before ?

Thanks
Kent

Are you trying to run the game from the shared (unix) folder? That can cause the error. If so, you should copy the file over to the emulated hard disk.

1. About using the Unix disk / shared folder, see this section in the SheepShaver for MacOSX setup guide:
http://www.emaculation.com/doku.php/she ... _unix_disk

2. Virtual memory is indeed not available in SheepShaver.

Well, it did make a difference to move it to the internal hd. First time I launched it, it complained that 24M was required, and only 22M was available. OK.... I'm quite sure I have played Marathon 2 on a much feebler machine than that.

So I upped the SheepShaver memory to 64M from 32M and relaunched. Then it complained "Marathon couldn't allocate enough sound channels because there isn't enough free system memory available (try giving Marathon less memory)"

Edit: I posted this before OK'ing the dialog so I was very surprised to see Marathon 2 launch and run just fine, albeit without sound when I closed it. Sound is enabled in the control panel, and works in other programs.

I tried reducing the number of sound channels in the game configuration from 4 to 1 but that didn't make a difference. SheepShaver memory is also bumped to 256MB with no change.

The memory handling in SheepShaver seems to be substantially different from a real Mac. I'd be interested in hearing what causes these incompatibilities ?

The problem is -kinda- solved in that I used BasiliskII instead. The sound works properly in that emulator. I also noticed that the colors are significantly lighter in Basilisk compared to SheepShaver. I launched another game, Monkey Island - Le Chucks revenge in both emulators and noticed that the colors were a lot lighter in Basilisk. I much prefer the Basilisk rendition. Something about the gamma profile ?

Incidentally, sound works properly in Monkey Island in both emulators.

Not entirely true (maybe I'm not an expert after all), I was able to get the system to access more memory by use of a program called RAMCharger, the demo and full version work, it does give an error message on the about mac screen, but ignoring it works fine.

RAM Charger works by allocating memory only when needed. That way less memory is needed. With the same applications running, more memory is available to other applications. It does not increase memory. It will work with both physical and virtual memory, but in SheepShaver there is no virtual memory. See also: http://lowendmac.com/tech/ramcharger/index.shtml